Addition of Sexton balloons CAA’s NFL roster

Before NFL player agents Ben Dogra and Tom Condon agreed recently to new long-term deals to stay at CAA Sports, they engaged in talks to make their practice — which boasts more first-round NFL draft picks and more Pro Bowlers over the past five years than any other agency — even more dominant.

Last week, CAA confirmed that it had reached an agreement in principal for prominent agent Jimmy Sexton to join CAA Sports, a deal in which he will bring about 40 NFL players and 30 pro and college football coaches with him. Among Sexton’s clients are New York Jets coach Rex Ryan, Alabama coach Nick Saban, and starting quarterbacks Philip Rivers (San Diego), Tim Tebow (Denver), Christian Ponder (Minnesota) and Ryan Fitzpatrick (Buffalo).

With the merger of Sexton’s NFL practice into Condon and Dogra’s business, CAA Football will now represent about 150 NFL players, including 15 of the league’s 32 starting quarterbacks and 50 players who have played in a Pro Bowl.

Condon and Dogra, who joined CAA in 2006 — Condon from IMG in April and Dogra from the former SFX Sports in July of that year — agreed to extensions of more than five years for their new deals. Sexton would not disclose the financial terms of his deal but said the length mirrors that of Condon’s and Dogra’s deals.

Sexton said Condon and Dogra both approached him about joining CAA after the whirlwind period of NFL free agency that ensued following the end of the league’s lockout this summer. Sexton talked to CAA Sports co-heads Howard Nuchow and Michael Levine, as well as meeting with others at CAA’s Los Angeles headquarters, before making the decision to join CAA.

Sexton said he spent a lot of time talking to Condon and Dogra before making his decision.

“The one thing that impressed me more than anything was how they were rival agents six years ago and yet they worked so well together over the last five or six years,” Sexton said. “That was impressive to me: that they could take their separate practices and be that good that fast.”

News that Sexton was joining CAA came as a bit of a surprise in the industry, as Sexton had joined forces with prominent NFL agent Pat Dye Jr. about a year ago to form a new company, SportsTrust Advisors.

Sexton did not have an immediate comment on which clients that he and Dye had recruited together, such as rookie Atlanta wide receiver Julio Jones, would go to CAA and which would stay with Dye. Said Sexton, “Pat and I discussed it over the past couple of weeks and I made him aware [of the decision to join CAA].”

Dye declined to comment.

Sexton will continue to work out of his Memphis office, while Condon and Dogra work out of the CAA Football office in St. Louis. But, Sexton said, “All three of us will work together.”

Condon and Dogra said they started talking earlier this year about making CAA’s NFL practice even more powerful than it has been by adding another agent, and they decided to pursue Sexton.

Sexton historically recruits a lot of players out of Southeastern U.S. colleges, but Dogra said adding his practice had nothing to do with recruiting. Instead, Condon and Dogra said, they targeted Sexton because they consider him innovative, respected and a trendsetter.

It’s long been said that the advantage of large player-representation practices is that the agents are able to place players because teams must deal with them for talent. The knock is that they are too big to provide personal service.

All three agents declined to comment about the power that CAA Football would now wield with NFL clubs, but asked if CAA Football had not gotten too big, Dogra said, “The ‘big’ issue is a recruiting issue. I mean, ‘big’ is all relative. There are some people who can’t service one client, let alone 10 clients. … If we didn’t feel like we could service our players, we would stop signing them.”